


The trouble with away missions

by Songbird13



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Hurt Bones, Hurt/Comfort, Worried Jim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-05 20:09:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10316042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Songbird13/pseuds/Songbird13
Summary: When Leonard McCoy goes down to a new planet, he expects someone to get hurt, he calls it realism, even if others call it pessimism. However, even with all the pessimism, he didn't really expect for HIM to be the patient, again.Jim gets worried for his best friend and Leonard grumbles, nothing new there.Warning: some horror in the second chapter.





	1. On the planet

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry that I've gone and injured Bones again, but I don't know about others, but it's a little too much fun to play with the grumpy, no rubbish, doctor. 
> 
> I don't own anyone and I'll return them (maybe a little more bruised), once I've had fun with them.
> 
> I hope you all enjoy :)

Away missions were bloody dangerous, in Leonard McCoy’s personal and professional opinions, especially on a ship like the USS Enterprise. Being the Chief Medical Officer, he saw all of the different types of injuries caused by new worlds and civilisations that didn’t like the anatomy of some of the crew aboard the galaxy class starship. He knew better than anyone of the dangers of the strange new worlds and today is no different. 

Leonard had been requested to go down to the planet surface with the away team as the medic and of course, in standard ‘Enterprise fashion,’ things were bound to go wrong.

It began with turbulence on the Enterprise in the morning, making Leonard feel sick and then having to use the transporters in order to get down to the planet. Once there, there was the exploration team, led by none other than James Tiberius ‘always-find-a-way-to-get-injured’ Kirk.

That idea alone was enough to lead Leonard’s blood pressure to soar through the roof. 

As he was focusing so hard on each member of the away team, his attention piqued as he saw something bright blue crawl onto the neck of one the Ensigns. Leonard was already moving towards the Ensign as he saw the bug begin to unfurl huge pincers in preparation to take a chunk out of the young man’s neck. Without thinking, he reached out and swiped the bug onto the leafy floor. 

He managed to check if there was any evident injury for just a second before a pain swept across his cheek and jaw as the Ensign’s defence training kicked in and he landed a punch on Leonard’s face. The force of the punch landed him on the floor, staring at the sky, as a litany of curses from several different languages fell from his mouth. 

“Oh, shit. I’m so sorry. Doctor, are you okay?” The Ensign asked; his voice filled with panic as he realised that he had just floored the CMO. He stepped into Leonard’s line of sight, his deep green eyes assessing him with worry.

Leonard groaned as he cupped his cheek gently, trying to stave off the pain that was throbbing there now. Leonard instinctively replied without thinking, his voice laced with sarcasm, “Jesus, kid, who the hell taught you how to punch, a damned ogre?” 

A panicked laugh escaped the Ensign’s mouth at the same time that Leonard heard a familiar voice call across the clearing, “Bones, what happened?” Several footfalls began to advance on his position as he sat up. He saw four concerned members of the away team as they ran towards him.

“I’m fine,” he grumbled. 

Jim looked over him with cautious, analysing blue eyes. He was apparently with what he found, because he was suddenly stood in front of Leonard, with his hand outstretched to help the doctor from where he was sprawled on the floor. 

Once Leonard was stood up, the team went back to their business, leaving Jim and Leonard stood in the clearing. Leonard was about to move off to watching the away team once more when he saw Jim’s expression. He looked…well – he looked terrified. When he spoke, his usually confident, happy voice was soft and had a hint of fear, like a child, “are you sure you’re okay Bones?”

“I’m fine Jim.” Jim didn’t look so sure. Leonard stifled an irritated sigh and eye roll, “if I’m not fine, I’ll let you know.” Leonard was trying his very best to sound sincere.  
“Do you promise Bones?”

“And you call me a mother hen,” he mumbled. Jim gave a glare at him and crossed his arms over his chest. ‘Great,’ Leonard thought he knew that look; it was Jim’s ‘not-going-to-move-until-you-agree-look. A sigh sat on his lips, just waiting to come out in a cloud of sarcasm. It ended up coming out with a resigned groan, “I promise Jim.”

Jim hesitated, looking at Leonard as if he was assessing if he was just joking or not. He titled his head, like a curious cat before he unwound his arms from where they were crossed over his chest. In the half a second of hesitation, Leonard was about to move away when Jim suddenly moved first. Now, he was stood like a statue, staring at Leonard with hard blue eyes and his right hand up in the air, with his little finger outstretched. He recognised this with a groan.

“Aren’t you a little old for ‘Pinky-Promises’?”

Jim replied only with a raised eyebrow. Leonard’s eyes looked up to the sky before flicking back to his best friend. Jim had been spending too much time with the pointy-eared, annoying Vulcan of a first officer, he decided. Another second passed before Leonard finally gave in and intertwined his own little finger with Jim’s in a promise.

Jim’s glare disappeared in an instant and was replaced with his usual jovial sunshine happiness that had the ability to make Leonard feel sick. “You ought to look where you’re going in the future,” Jim advised with a friendly clap to his shoulder before turning on his heel and continuing to catalogue the planet’s surface. 

He was left in the clearing to continue observing the away team. This time, he noted to himself, that he should be mindful not to surprise them. His cheek throbbed in response to this thought and he brought his hand up to cup his warmed cheek. He hadn’t been joking earlier, the kid could pull a punch and he had felt all different kinds of punches. It was kind of an occupational hazard with being the best friend and physician of Jim Kirk.

It wasn’t long before the away team was beginning to pack their things away, ready to go back to the ship. By this time, he was sat on a stump, just watching and not getting in the way. While watching, he had noticed that the quick iron-fisted Ensign from earlier had been glancing at him sheepishly, almost to make sure that he hadn’t broke the CMO.

When Jim finally announced that everyone should get ready to beam back to the ship, he stood up and something odd happened. The whole scenery around him blurred and warped as it went out of focus and came back into focus. His stomach flipped and his head ached, causing him to feel very disorientated and woozy. ‘Sit back down,’ the doctor in his brain was telling him over and over again, but he lost the ability to know where the stump was.

Instead, the floor began to rush up to him. He suddenly found himself kneeling on the floor with Jim kneeling in front of him, Leonard’s face cupped in his warm hands. Jim was speaking but to Leonard it felt as if he was under the water as everything began to go dark and the sounds muted.


	2. Nightmares

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some graphic horror tendencies, just a warning.
> 
> I hope everyone enjoys

There was an irritating beeping sound somewhere nearby. It was quiet, but repetitive enough to be infuriating. He could feel that he was laying down on something hard but comfortable, his head pillowed on something very soft. He could feel something on his hand, but he couldn’t determine what it was. His mouth felt as if it had been filled with cotton and there was an oddly sterile but comforting smell to the room. There was also another smell; it was fresh, like the woods, mixed with lemons and apples, chocolate and a hint of mint. It was a smell that made him think of happiness and freedom, oddly enough. It also made him think of the colours blue and gold, but he wasn’t quite sure why that was. 

Through his closed eyelids, he could see that the room that he was in was very bright and this made him uncertain as to whether he should open his eyes or not, afraid of the headache that might come with it. Taking stock of his body, he realised that despite just waking up, he felt tired and weary, as if he had run a marathon. 

There was a noise coming from his right…or was that his left…nope, that’s his right, definitely the right. Or rather, it wasn’t one noise; it was two…two voices to be specific. He recognised both voices but couldn’t quite place where he knew them from. 

“How is he?” a male asked. His voice was sweet and sounded comforting to him.

There was a rustling sound and a few buttons were pressed from behind him before a female voice replied, “according to these readings, he’s fine and it looks like he’ll be waking up very shortly, Captain.”

There was a sigh of…relief? “Can you tell how long it’ll be?”

“It could be anything from a few minutes to a few hours, I’m afraid,” she replied. She sounded almost sad as she spoke, but her voice got closer to him as she spoke. 

Without warning, one of his eyelids was wrenched back and a light was shone in his eye, causing him to flinch and turn his head away from the light with a groan. She made a surprised, but happy sound. “It looks like he’ll be awake before I expected,” she said with an amused voice. “I’ll go and fetch Doctor M’Benga.”

There was a moment of silence, before it was interrupted, “Bones?” He turned his head to the voice, still trying to place it. “Come on,” the voice said softly, “open your eyes for me.”

He cracked his eyes open, making sure that he didn’t look at the sterile white light from the ceiling, instead looking at the man next to him, “Jim?” He was glad to see his best friend sat next to him, glad to know that he wasn’t alone. 

Jim’s lips turned upwards and his eyes brightened. Someone cleared their throat at the bottom of his bed and Leonard turned his head to see Geoffrey M’Benga stood at the foot of the bed. M’Benga looked up to the readings above his head quickly and then turned his eyes back to Leonard. 

Leonard was glad to be back on the ship, but something didn’t feel right. “How are you feeling?” M’Benga asked and a fearful cry left Leonard’s mouth as he pulled his legs up to his chest and sat up, his back as far back on the bio-bed as he could. As M’Benga had spoken, a pool of blood had spilled from his mouth along with a handful of bugs that looked like cockroaches. M’Benga looked confused about Leonard’s reaction, apparently not caring about the bugs or the blood.

“Bones, what’s wrong?” As he looked at Jim, he saw that blue blood dripped from his mouth as well as two scorpions that leapt from his mouth to crawl on the bio-bed.  
He had to get out of here, was the only thought that he had, away from these monsters-these imposters.

He leapt from the bed, tugging the IV line from the back of his hand, not caring that he caused a small tear in the skin that sluggishly leaked bright red blood. He went to run for the exit, but was greeted by his head nurse, Christine Chapel, who stood with a PADD in her hands, “Leonard?”

Another yell left his lips as green blood, like Spock’s fell from her mouth and a huge spider crawled from her lips and sat on her cheek.

Instead, he turned on his heels and headed straight for his office. When he was there, he set locked the door and began to barricade his door with his desk, chair, filing cabinet, everything and anything that he could to keep those monsters away from him. 

There was a knocking from the other side of the door which caused him to jump and trip over his own feet and land on the floor. “Bones, what’s wrong?” Jim’s voice called through the door. It sounded like him, but what he had seen definitely WASN’T Jim. 

A fearful sob escaped his lips as he pressed himself into the corner and curled into a ball. 

There was talking on the other side of the door and he couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but a part of his brain supplied him with images of his own mouth being filled with bugs and it caused his stomach to flip uncomfortably. 

It didn’t feel as if much time had passed when he was terrified by the door sliding open despite him locking it and barricading it. There was a scraping sound as the desk; filing cabinet and couch were moved back from the door. 

He was caught in a war of options. Did he look up at who had entered the room or hide his face? Did he try to fight them or let them take him? What would they do to him once they had caught him?

“Doctor McCoy? What is wrong?” the calm and collected voice of the first officer asked.

There was silence after that and Leonard somehow found the courage to raise his head slightly from his knees to look up at the Vulcan. He could feel his body trembling as a quiet sob escaped his lips. Spock looked the same as he remembered-no weird colours or bugs falling from his lips and Spock was all alone; there was no-one else in the room with them.

When Leonard didn’t reply, Spock merely raised one of his eyebrows in question rather than using up valuable energy asking the same question again. Leonard was surprisingly thankful for this because it prevented the sight of any more bugs. 

He suddenly thought about Spock’s usually ‘logical arguments’ and quickly blurted, “Don’t speak. Don’t even open your mouth.”

Spock’s eyebrows burrowed together into a frown before he nodded to Leonard. Using the self-control that Vulcan’s were famous for, he kept his lips tightly shut as he turned around to face Leonard’s moved desk. He opened up the second drawer down and pulled out a PADD, making Leonard wonder how the hell he knew where they were.

He typed something on the screen and handed the PADD to Leonard. ‘What is wrong?’

Leonard sighed and explained what he saw. To be completely fair to Spock, he didn’t open his mouth once, using the PADD to ask any questions or make any remarks in relation to the story. By the end of Leonard’s story, he had come out of the corner and was now stood with his back against the wall. He pushed off and began to pace. “I don’t know, are they imposters, or am I just going crazy?”

He turned to look at Spock who stared at him and raised an eyebrow. He began to type on the PADD, ‘could it be an external stimulus from the planet surface?’

“No idea, Spock, maybe,” he admitted. 

‘Can I be of any assistance?’ Spock typed and this caused Leonard to stop for a moment. The hobgoblin was asking if he could help. 

“Tell me if I’m crazy,” Leonard supplied.

‘You are the doctor, Doctor,’ he typed and Leonard smiled. As he read this, he heard a loud crash from outside and saw Spock’s mouth open slightly and a drop of brown coated his lips as a long leg poked out as Spock shut his mouth once more, but this was enough for Leonard’s fear to spike once more, he began to pace again, mumbling to himself as he did. He thought that he was keeping an eye on the Vulcan, but as he turned, he felt Spock stand behind him and his warmer than average hand clasped around the pressure points on his neck.

The effect was instantaneous, an instant of light-headedness and then darkness and nothing.


	3. Headache

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long since I updated, enjoy :)

Consciousness didn’t come slowly like the last time. Instead, it hit him like a freight train. It felt as if all of his senses had been taken away and were all reactivated, causing his brain to almost overload, giving him an awful headache. 

Jim had complained a few times about the effects of the Vulcan nerve pinch, but he had always thought that he was putting it on. In the future, he thought, he might have to lay off the kid a bit. At the thought of Jim, he thought about the blood and bugs and he involuntarily bristled.

He groaned to himself and heard someone gasp, immediately followed by something move to his right. “Bones?” a soft voice asked and he felt a small pressure on his arm. 

Seeing the bright lights through his eyelids made him almost scared to open his eyes, but he knew that he couldn’t really hide the fact that he was awake from Jim. Leonard turned his head to the side and cracked his eyes open a tiny amount to look at his best friend. “Hey kid,” he mumbled, his voice thick from not using it. Even through the tiny bit that he could see, he saw Jim’s incredibly blue eyes light up as he grinned down at Leonard. 

“Hey Bones, you okay?” he asked almost hesitantly. 

Leonard expelled the breath that he hadn’t realised that he had been holding, when he realised that everything was back to how it should be. No bugs and no blood. Getting used to the light, he dared to open his eyes a little more to look at the young Captain. “Yeah kid, I’m great.”

Jim’s shoulders visibly relaxed as he beamed at Leonard. 

As Leonard smiled back at Jim, his headache flared up once more with the movement of his face muscles, causing a spike of pain to crack up his temples. Leonard groaned again and held his hand to his head. He could have sworn that he saw Jim grin at him-the bastard.

“I told you that Vulcan nerve pinches hurt, didn’t I?”

“At least I don’t get pointy pinched twice a damn week,” he grumbled.

Jim chuckled. “I’m glad to see your sarcasm’s intact.” Leonard heard Jim move and opened his eyes to see that he had stood up. “I’ll be back in a sec, Bones.”

Jim was only gone for a moment, returning with Dr M’Benga at his side. 

Jim returned to his seat while M’Benga stood, looking over Leonard’s bio-bed readings, again. “How are you feeling, Leonard?” he asked, almost hesitantly. What had happened earlier on was beginning to come back to him in bits. He had been pretty erratic earlier hadn’t he? 

“I’m fine...” he hesitated. “I’m sorry for earlier on,” he said quickly, hating the red tinge that he felt on his cheeks, like he was a misbehaving kid again. 

“Don’t worry Bones,” Jim replied immediately. 

“You weren’t quite yourself,” M’Benga supplied as he shifted his weight slightly. “After talking with Commander Spock about what you had mentioned in your office, we did a few more tests. We found that you had a small thorn in the back of your calf that was filled with a natural hallucinogen. We believe that this was responsible for you seeing things that weren’t there.”

"How the hell did I get a thorn in my leg?” he asked, his headache flaring when he raised his voice, causing him to wince. There was a sharp jab and a hiss to his neck, causing him to startle. “What the…?” 

M’Benga just smiled at him as his headache dulled almost completely with the painkiller. “The Captain notified me that you had a headache,” M’Benga supplied. Leonard watched as he moved over to the wall to recycle the hypospray into the chute, wondering how the hell he hadn’t noticed that M’Benga had a damn hypospray in the first place. “And to your question, I believe that the Captain has the answer,” M’Benga said almost cryptically as he returned to where he was before he moved. 

Leonard turned his head to look at Jim, who smiled at him. “Remember the away mission, where you ended up being punched by Ensign Farren?” Leonard did his very best not to groan again, instead deciding to scowl at Jim. “Well, when the science team tested the drug in the thorn, it matched with samples that were taken from that planet. So, when you took a fall, that’s probably where it’s from.”

“It was small enough to penetrate the threads of your trousers, but big enough to cause severe hallucinations.”

“Also,” Jim continued, “the botany department actually said you were very lucky. The thorn was one of the first to shoot from the floor, but apparently, when they were checking he plants, in about two to three weeks, the whole floor would have been covered in similar plants.”

Leonard felt a large shudder rip through his body at the thought of what more than one thorn would feel like.

Jim chuckled and he saw a small smile form on M’Benga’s mouth, causing Leonard to throw a scowl at the two men. 

However, his scowl wasn’t quite as effective as he was hoping as a large yawn appeared suddenly. M’Benga smiled a little more, “try getting some more rest, Leonard. Your body’s still getting rid of the residual hallucinogen.”

“Sure, I’ll try,” Leonard assured him as M’Benga turned away and went back to whatever he had been doing before. Leonard closed his eyes and was startled when he felt someone carding their hand through his hair, like his Momma did to him whenever he was sick or when he’d had a nightmare. It was relaxing and began to pull him into sleep. “Go to sleep now Bones, or I’ll get Mr Spock to nerve pinch you again,” Leonard hummed a grumbled protest as he closed his eyes and Jim chuckled again. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

That spoken promise made him feel secure as he was pulled down by sleep’s siren call, making him forget about all of the troubles caused by away missions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you all enjoyed. The next story I make, I'll try not to hurt Bones, but I can't promise :)


End file.
